Ramon Zürcher's debut feature finds a whole alternative universe within the confines of one Berlin apartment, where family life constantly verges on the surreal. His characters are a middle-class clan whose complicated interconnections take a while to sink in, in part because they're joined for a time by an attractive handyman neighbor whom one senses the tightly-wound matriarch of the house (Jenny Schily) would like to have fix more than her washing machine. The youngest member of the household, little Clara (Mia Kasalo), has a penchant for screaming exultantly whenever a kitchen appliance is in use; her older siblings, two visiting home from presumed university studies, are forever engaged in games of occasionally alarming, cruel one-upmanship. So many tensions roil under the surface that they've become the surface—a ceaseless turbulence. They culminate in a family dinner that is, like everything else here, at once bizarre, mysterious, fraught and utterly familiar. With its unusual framings and seemingly casual yet tightly orchestrated movement—somehow encompassing the family cat and dog, not to mention a pesky home-invading moth—The Strange Little Cat offers a droll, eventually poignant ballet of domestic discontent. Its seemingly wisp-thin “plot” may confound encapsulation, yet its sum impact defies expectations.-Dennis Harvey

Special support for this program generously provided by the Goethe-Institut San Francisco

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Ramon Zürcher

Aarberg, Switzerland native Ramon Zürcher studied video at Bern University of the Arts before enrolling in the German Film and Television Academy Berlin to pursue a course in directing. He describes his feature debut The Strange Little Cat as “a horror movie without any horror.”